This film is one of ten films donated to the Archive by East Yorkshire Council on behalf of a Mr Quarmby.   They all, bar one, date from the Second World War, featuring the Home Guard and various war fund raising events in Bridlington, such as 'Wings for Victory Week’.  The Home Guard films are saparate instructional films, made by F.A Slim of the E Company, 5th ER Bridlington.  They provide a fascinating insight into the training of the use camouflage and other fieldcraft....

This film is one of ten films donated to the Archive by East Yorkshire Council on behalf of a Mr Quarmby.   They all, bar one, date from the Second World War, featuring the Home Guard and various war fund raising events in Bridlington, such as 'Wings for Victory Week’.  The Home Guard films are saparate instructional films, made by F.A Slim of the E Company, 5th ER Bridlington.  They provide a fascinating insight into the training of the use camouflage and other fieldcraft.  Unfortunately nothing is known of the filmmaker of this and the other films, presumably Mr Quarmby.  However, all the films display the work of a fairly accomplished amateur, with most of the films, like this one, including intertitles.

Although the film title focuses on the visit of Lady Mountbatten, the first half of the film highlights the links with the U.S. after they had entered the war following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour on December 7, 1941.  This film was probably taken soon after U.S. personnel were stationed in Britain in 1942.  At this time most of them would have been air force: East Yorkshire being an important base for the RAF, with a base just down the road at Driffield.  For anyone wanting to identify the U.S. military personnel seen in the film they might want to try the search facilities at ArmyAirForces.com (References).  For more on U.S. forces stationed in Yorkshire see the Context for Holiday Week 1942-1943. 

The Home Guard would have been especially important for Bridlington, standing as it does in a vulnerable position for a German attack along the east coast.  The coast between Bridlington and Holderness was just 200 miles from German occupied Holland, and Bridlington had the only pier between Hull and Scarborough capable of landing AFVs (armoured fighting vehicles).

Of course it wasn’t known where a threat from invasion may come from, if at all.  But in preparation defences were built all along the coastline from the summer of 1940, after the swift fall of France.  Hardened field defences – small fortified structures, known as ‘pillboxes’ – dotted the coast.  A file from the Bridlington Borough's records contains the 'secret' local plan for Bridlington’s ‘Immobilisation Scheme’: the arrangements to make life difficult for any invading force – see a facsimile on the East Riding, World in Conflict website (below).  The pillboxes are now mostly gone due to demolition and erosion, although some still remain (see References for photos).  One ex Bridlington resident (Terry Waddington), who was a young lad at the time, relates on the Wartime Memories Project website that, “the sea front was soon off limits and festooned with barbed wire and gun emplacements.” 

Terry Waddington also notes the strong presence of the RAF in Bridlington, with an Initial Training Wing for potential aircrew members.  “It was a common sight to see columns of RAF aircrew recruits with their distinguishing white flashes on the front of their forage caps, learning the basics of drill on the seafront.”  The RAF commandeered the Spa Royal Hall and other buildings as classrooms and barracks for the trainees.  Some boarding houses were required to accommodate the permanent staff.  This strategic position didn’t stop Bridlington Borough Council, however, from making plans in 1939 for the evacuation of 5,000 people from Hull in anticipation of the outbreak of war. 

As it turned out the combined forces of the RAF and Navy proved enough to deter any possibly invasion.  This was demonstrated early on, as Austin J Ruddy notes: “On August 15th 1940, ninety nine German fighters and bombers flew towards Holderness, on their way to attack airfields inland [Driffield being one].  Radar at Flamborough Head detected them and aircraft from local bases intercepted the raiders, destroying 16 bombers and 7 fighters with the loss of one RAF fighter, causing the aerial armada to retreat back to base.”  By August 1942 the tide was beginning to turn for the allied forces, with US entry into the war, and Germany getting bogged down in the disastrous second front against the Soviet Union.

The Anglo American Pen Friends is another interesting feature of the film.  References to this are hard to find, so it isn’t clear whether this was just a local initiative or a national one.  Doubtless similar schemes did exist across the country, and that the citizens of the US showed a desire a help the British, even before entering the war – although the relations between the US and Britain at a higher level wasn’t all cosy at this time; there being major disagreements over the second front, long-term political goals and the lend-lease agreement.

Film of Lady Edwina Mountbatten during the war appears to be quite scarce, and this may well be the best footage there is of her from this period.  Lady Mountbatten would have been about 41 at the time.  Coming from a very wealthy family she married Lord Louis Mountbatten in 1922.  Lady Mountbatten was a renown socialite, and during her ‘open marriage’ with Lord Mountbatten (both reportedly bisexual) had several affairs.  A Channel 4 documentary, broadcast in November 2008, presented evidence that she had an affair in the 1930s, not with Paul Robeson, as alleged at the time, but with another famous black actor and musician, Leslie Hutchinson (the lover of Cole Porter).  But perhaps the best documented affair was the post-war liaison with Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of the newly formed independent India.

Lord Mountbatten was heavily engaged in the war:  at this time Chief of Combined Operations, responsible for planning the commando raid of St. Nazaire in March 1942 and the less successful Dieppe Raid of 19th August.  Lady Mountbatten was not to be outdone and during the war worked in an ambulance brigade; she is seen in the film wearing the uniform of the St John Ambulance Brigade.

After the war she joined her husband as the Viceroyalty in India during the tragic partition in 1947.  In her book on Edwina Mountbatten, Janet Morgan contends that after the war she devoted herself to helping to organise relief teams in newly liberated Europe and to help bring home prisoners held in Japanese camps.  To find out how Lady Mountbatten might have sounded like in her speech, there is a clip on British Movietone from October 1941 (Story No: 41392).

The reference to the ‘Libyan Victory’ is most likely to be for the re-taking of the Libyan city of Tobruk by allied forces, led by Montgomery, from Rommel’s Axis forces, on 13th November 1942.

Armistice Day is better known now as Remembrance Day (the name change coming in 1946).  It originated in a suggestion from an Australian journalist in 1919; a year after the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" of 1918, when fighting stopped, five hours after the armistice was signed in Compiègne.  It was adopted by the US and Commonwealth before the British Legion become the custodians when it was formed in 1921.  This subsequently inspired similar commemorations in many other countries, and came to stand for those who were killed in action in war.  The idea of wearing poppies however came from a young American woman, Moina Michael, inspired by John McCrae’s poem, In Flanders Fields.    Her motivation was entirely non-nationalistic, and non-political – and so regarded by most people.  Nevertheless, there was early concern that, as it only marks those “who have given their lives in the Service of their country”, Armistice Day had a strong nationalist, and possibly militarist, flavour.   Hence the Co-operative Women's Guild produced the first white poppies in 1933, joined by the Peace Pledge Union the following year, to mark all who had died as a result of war.  

The text that follows the Armistice Sunday commemoration is the Ode of Remembrance, taken from Laurence Binyon's poem "For the Fallen", written in September 1914, shortly after hostilities began in the First World War.  The text has been a part of Remembrance Sunday in many countries ever since (later set to music by both Cyril Rootham and Elgar).

References

Mark A Stoler, Allies in war: Britain and America against the Axis powers, 1940-1945, London, 2005.
Janet Morgan, Edwina Mountbatten: A Life of Her Own, Scribner, 1991.

East Riding, World in Conflict
Pillbox coastal fortifications of WWII in the East Riding of Yorkshire
The Wartime Memories Project - Children in World War Two
ArmyAirForces.com